Sword Art Online: Orange Ronin
by Advent of Shadows
Summary: Trapped in a virtual world with only one means of escape, Naruto has no choice but to gain allies and work towards the goal of clearing all one hundred floors of the castle known as Aincrad. Even with his skills as a beta-tester, nothing could prove to be a greater task. Meeting friends and enemies alike along the way, this will be an adventure unlike any other.
1. Sword Art Online

Summary: Trapped in a virtual world with only one means of escape, Naruto has no choice but to gain allies and work towards the goal of clearing all one hundred floors of the castle known as Aincrad. Even with his skills as a beta-tester, nothing could prove to be a greater task. Meeting friends and enemies alike along the way, this will be an adventure unlike any other.

Pairings: Naruto/Asuna. Background pairings undecided.

Warnings: This story is rated M. Don't read this expecting material that is only suitable for children. Do not expect warnings for M-rated material. I will try to put up warnings for scenes that would normally warrant a higher rating than M, however.

Notes: This was originally posted as Sword Art Online: Reaver. It was then changed to King of Blades: Aincrad. Now, it is Sword Art Online: Orange Ronin. It should be the last title change. Hopefully.

* * *

**1. Sword Art Online**

There was no game more highly anticipated than Sword Art Online. Unlike the unsatisfying and subpar mini-games that had flooded the market in the year before, Sword Art Online would be the first to take full advantage of the NerveGear.

But such explanations were not needed to make some people excited.

In his bedroom, a spiky haired blond teenager was excited for a different reason. He was no stranger to Sword Art Online, having been one of the lucky one thousand players to become a beta-tester back in August. After having the Closed Beta come to an end in September, he could not wait to play the game once more.

Looking to his clock, he saw that it was still three minutes before one o'clock. Until those three minutes passed, he could not log in. The official launch began at one, after all.

All the same, he took the helmet-shaped device and lied down on his bed. Slipping the NerveGear on, he eagerly waited for the time to come, his eyes on the clock in the top left hand corner.

The moment that it changed to one o'clock, he exclaimed, "Link start!"

Instantly, a barrage of colors seemed to come flying at him as the NerveGear seemed to disappear.

He watched as icons began to pop up, checking the link between his mind and the NerveGear. Once that was done, he set the language to Japanese and began logging in.

"Beta test data still available. Would you like to use it," he read. With a grin, he pressed the _yes_ button. He had wondered if it would allow him to do that.

Seemingly in a flash of light, he appeared in a city.

Flexing his hands, he could not help but feel amazed at how real it felt. It was truly an amazing invention. Not only did he have control over this avatar, but it felt just like his real body did.

His avatar actually looked just like him, from his slightly short stature to his whisker-like birthmarks. He was even dressed somewhat similar with a mixture of black and orange.

"I wonder," he murmured as he put his right index and middle finger together. He swiped them downwards, opening up the menu. Quickly moving to his skills, he grinned. The two extra skills he had obtained in beta were listed: _Katana_ and _Martial Arts_.

Closing the menu, he made his way out of the city. As much as he enjoyed just moving around in the form of his avatar, fighting in it was always something more.

It actually took a while to get out of the city and go to one of the nearby fields where boars could easily be found. They were the weakest monsters in the game, but they were perfect for a new player to level up. Despite being a beta-tester, his level did not reflect that. While his extra skills were passed on from his character in the Closed Beta to his character in the full game, his level and equipment definitely had not transfer.

As he saw the frenzy boars up ahead, he reached down and picked up a rock. He tossed it up and down a few times before he prepared to throw it. As a red glow surrounded the rock, he threw it at one of the boars. It struck the low level monster with surprising speed, but it only left a small mark that faded within seconds.

"Let's get this party started," Naruto said with a grin as he got into position.

As it charged him, his right hand began to glow, his attack already prepared.

At the last second, he jumped out of the way and lashed out with his hand. It was Embracer, a Martial Arts technique that allowed him to stab an opponent with his fingers. It was not the most damaging move out there by any means, but it was enough to kill the frenzy boar in a single hit.

A window popped up as the boar shattered like grass, showing him how much experience and Col he made for killing the monster.

Turning towards the other frenzy boars, he began to run. He needed to work fast. Otherwise, other players would show up before too long, and the last thing he wanted was to have to share the area with another player when he was trying to grind.

He continued his conflict with the frenzy boars for several hours, only to stop when he was teleported back to the City of Beginning.

Until that point, he had no idea that there was even anything wrong.

* * *

Nearly a month had passed since Sword Art Online began… nearly a month since ten thousand players were trapped in what amounted to a _death game_.

Less than half of those players were actually trying to beat the game, despite knowing that it was the only way to get out of the game. Two thousand had died through either suicide or death by monster, and four thousand were still in the City of Beginnings, hoping that help would come from the outside.

Naruto was not one of the ones that were just waiting around though. He was just not the type to expect other people to solve his problems.

Not too far from the town of Tolbana, Naruto was walking towards one of the dungeons he had not visited since the Closed Beta. It was actually the only real sizeable dungeon on the first floor, but as he did not think he was a high enough level to solo the boss, he had chosen to grind elsewhere until he was ready. If not for the message from Argo about the strategy meeting the next day, he might not have even stopped by.

Entering the dungeon, he saw several Ruin Kobold Troopers up ahead. A gnarly club could be seen in the hands of each monster.

"Only level five?" Naruto muttered as he saw the monster's level. He knew that he should have been expecting that. He had been having a difficult time gaining levels lately because he was several levels higher than the monsters that made up the first floor. Excluding the boss, at least.

Sighing, he drew his sword. He had obtained it through a quest a week earlier. With a black, non-reflective blade, a tsuba that appeared to be made of polished brass, and a black wrapped hilt, the katana was appropriately titled Ebony Blade. As far as he knew, it was the best katana that could be obtained on the first floor though, much like the Anneal Blade was the best longsword that could be obtained on the first floor.

With his fingers firmly wrapped around the hilt of the sword, he held the blade so that he could perform a slash with it. He dashed forward as the blade glowed and swung the sword horizontally. The _Reaver_ move was a basic technique that anyone with a curved sword could use, but given that he was nine levels higher than his opponent, he was able to cut the monster completely in half.

Without even waiting for the kobold to shatter, he ran towards the next one with his sword low. As soon as he was close enough, he murmured, "Hiogi."

The blade slashed upwards, downwards, and then came into a stabbing motion, piercing the next kobold through the chest. Within the span of a couple seconds, both monsters were destroyed, though it barely gave him any experience.

Moving along through the dungeon, he dispatched a number of monsters with ease. There was no real challenge in the fights, but that was to be expected.

He spent an hour in the dungeon, continuing his grinding.

Just when he was about to turn around and head back out of the dungeon, he heard the sound of fighting.

Picking up his pace, he came within view of an intersection. An individual wearing a hooded cloak was fighting another Ruin Kobold Trooper. Unlike the ones he fought earlier, it was a level six. He idly wondered what level the hooded player was as the figure dodged the kobold's three-strike combo.

His eyes opened wide as he watched the cloaked figure use a quick thrust that he recognized as Linear. It was the most basic technique a rapier-user learned, but the speed behind the attack was incredible. In all honesty, he doubted that any of his attacks were even comparable to it in speed.

It took one more Linear to finish off the kobold, though Naruto couldn't help but be surprised by that choice of attack.

"That's an extreme overkill, you know," he remarked as he walked towards the figure.

With a start, the rapier-user turned to Naruto.

It was often said by people that knew him outside of the game that he was not very observant. That was not the truth though. In all actuality, he could be very observant, but he was only observant when he was interested in something.

So as he looked at the rapier-user, he could read the person's body language. Confusion was the only emotion that seemed to stand out.

He had never seen a Linear so perfect, so he had assumed that it was a fellow beta-tester. It took most people longer than a month to obtain such skills, especially on the first floor. But the figure's confusion at the relatively common MMORPG term told him different.

If anything, it made him wonder if this was the rapier-user's first game.

"Overkill means that you did a lot more damage than the opponent had health," Naruto explained, remembering the kobold's health far. "The kobold was almost dead before that last Linear. You probably could have poked it and it would have died."

"Is that a problem?" the cloaked figure asked.

The voice shocked Naruto. He could remember how the mirrors had changed everyone so that their avatar looked exactly like they did in real life back on the first day of Sword Art Online, and one thing that had stood out was that at least two-thirds of the players had been male. But there was nothing masculine about the voice that came from underneath that cloak. Standing before him was one of the world's rare female players.

"Sometimes," Naruto answered, trying to hide his shock. "It's not really practical. You have to concentrate to use Sword Skills, so using them is a good way to get tired. And then, of course, there's the return path, so you don't really want to get too tired."

"Return path?" Her voice was faint from fatigue, but even so, Naruto barely stopped a smile from coming to his face.

"Yeah, it took me about an hour to get here from the entrance, and that's the only way out of the dungeon. From there, the closest town is about thirty minutes away. And if you're exhausted, you'll make more mistakes. For a soloer, any small mistake could cost you your life. It's not like we come back when we die, after all.

"Then there's no problem. I'm not returning," she managed to say, exhaustion evident in her voice.

Naruto could not hide his shock at that. "What do you mean? You need to go back if you want potions, food, equipment repairing, sleep…."

"I do not need medicine when I am not taking damage, I still have plenty of bread with me, I bought five of the same sword so that I can switch when they get too damage, and I use the nearby safe area to rest in."

Safe areas were rooms in a dungeon where monsters could not enter. While hunting and mapping, it was a nice place, but it could only be used for maybe an hour of short rest. With a floor of cold stone, no beds, and the constant sounds of monster's footsteps and growls, deep sleep was pretty much impossible.

"How many hours have you been here?" he asked after a few moments.

"Three days… or was it four…."

"If you keep this up, you're going to die," Naruto remarked with a frown. He did not know how she even had it in her to stand. There was no way that three or four days in the dungeon would do anything good for a player's fatigue levels.

"Everyone will die in the end," she said matter-of-factly. "In just one month, two thousand people had died, and the first floor still has not been cleared. It simply isn't possible to beat this game. Sooner or later, everyone will die. The only difference is when it actually happens."

"Giving up… that's the cowards' way," Naruto said, shaking his head fiercely. "You're wrong. The game can be beaten. It's not as if even half of those deaths were a result of them actually playing the game. Most of the people that have died so far only died because they chose to end their lives. There have not been as many deaths lately as there were the first few weeks. As long as we do not give up, we can beat this game and get out of here. Some people will die before it is beat, but it can be done."

She looked taken aback by his words. No, that was not quite what fully happened. There was something else that affected her. It was something more than mere words. It was the sheer conviction and resolve that he carried.

"If you want to give up, I'll walk away now. I'm not your boss or anything, after all. But if you want to actually try to make it out of this game alive, you can come with me. There's a meeting tomorrow in Tolbana about clearing the first floor," Naruto said, looking at her.

Much to his surprise, she opened the main menu and sent him a request to form a party with her.

With a smile, he accepted. That was the answer he had been hoping for, though he had not actually expected her to go that far.

"Let's head back to town then. None of the monsters between here and the entrance should have respawned by now, but they may have changed that since the beta," Naruto said as he turned back towards the way he came. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the girl's name was Asuna.

He entered the dungeon as a soloer and now had a small party.

* * *

Author's Note: As you can may have been able to see, this story is a fusion fanfic. That means that the Naruto characters are from the same world as the SAO characters in this story. Every Naruto character is in this world, but most will not show up. Maybe fifteen will show up during SAO, and I'm probably overestimating the number.

Thanks for reading the first chapter, and I hope you enjoyed yourselves.


	2. Illfang the Kobold Lord

**2. Illfang the Kobold Lord**

The next day, forty-five people had gathered at the meeting location in the town of Tolbana.

The numbers surprised Naruto, in all honesty. Out of eight thousand players, less than fifty were actually trying to clear the first floor.

But more importantly, there were three less people than they should have had at minimum. Argo had mentioned that they intended to use a raid to clear the first floor, but a raid group was supposed to consist of forty-eight players. In order to have zero deaths while fighting a floor boss, they needed to have two raid groups to switch between. That was the ideal way.

Granted, Naruto had hoped to eventually deal with the boss by going solo or teaming up with only a couple strong characters, but he would have waited until he gained another six levels at the very least before he attempted it. The average player in this group, according to Argo, was level ten.

"Thank you for coming today. My name is Diabel, and I like to consider my job a _knight_," the blue haired man said, catching the attention of the gathered players.

Laughter could be heard, along with comments about there not being a job system in the game.

The laughter died as Diabel grew serious though. "Today, my party found the stairs leading to the top-most floor of that tower. That means that we will reach the first floor's boss room tomorrow!" That had everyone's undivided attention. "We need to defeat the boss to reach the second floor. By defeating it, we will show everyone in the City of Beginning that it is possible to beat this game. This is our duty. Don't you all agree?"

Cheers and clapping could be heard immediately.

Once it died down, Diabel continued. "Alright, let's begin our planning. First, we need to divide into parties of six. An ordinary party wouldn't stand a chance against a boss, so we need to form a raid group using multiple parties.

Immediately, people began gathering and forming parties, causing Naruto to look around to see if there was anyone left. While he was glad that Asuna was already in his party, he knew that he would at least need to be in a party of three. He would have said four normally, seeing as how someone else had shown up after the meeting started, but given that it was just Argo, he doubted that she had any intention of joining in the raid.

"Naruto, is that you?"

Naruto looked at the source of the voice and saw a raven haired teenager moving towards him. The Anneal Blade was visible upon his back.

"You kind of look familiar," Naruto said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. He hated it when he forgot who someone was.

"It's me, Kirito," he answered in a quiet voice.

Almost instantly, Naruto pulled up the main menu and sent Kirito a party invitation.

He only knew two other beta-players well. The first was Argo the Rat, though she was simply an excellent informant. The second was Kirito. He had teamed up with Kirito during the beta to deal with a few bosses. He was a very skilled player, so there was no need for hesitation.

"I should have known. You don't look _that_ different," Naruto said, shaking his head as Kirito's name and health bar showed up underneath Asuna's.

Looking around, Diabel began to speak again. "Since everyone has joined a party I want to say a few last words before-"

"Just wait a second!" It came as a shout, making everyone turn their heads towards the voice the figure jumped down the steps and into the center of the amphitheater. His most distinctive trait was his brown hair that was styled similarly to a cactus. "My name's Kibaou and I want to say something before we proceed." Naturally, this made a few people give him questioning looks, unsure as to what was going on.

"Some of you here need to apologize to the two thousand people who have died so far over the course of this game!"

"Kibaou-san, are you referring to the beta-testers?" Diabel asked.

"Obviously who else could I be referring to?" Kibaou took his place next to Diabel. "On the very day that this crappy game started, those people dashed off from City of Beginning and disappeared into the game leaving behind over nine thousand players who didn't know right from left. They monopolized on the best hunting grounds and the quest that could make them stronger. They just played the game without a care for those that they left behind...there should be some betas in this group, hiding their beta status and latching onto other players hoping that they could get away with an easy fight. I want them to kneel before all of us and ask forgiveness for what they've done and give up all of the items and money that they've hoarded."

Naruto and Kirito exchanged a look at that. There was some truth to what Kibaou was saying, but it was highly over exaggerated. The beta testers could not have done anything to stop suicides or help the players that had chosen to remain in the City of Beginning. In the end, most of the beta testers were simply being pragmatic. It was better to have the best players leveling fast and hard so that they could clear floors faster. If the beta testers had stuck around and waited to catch everyone up, it was highly possible that no one would have even entered the dungeons where the boss room was located yet. It had taken nearly a month just to map out the dungeons.

It was not like the beta testers just abandoned the newer players either. With the help of Argo, they had distributed a free guide that would help any new players.

Naruto was about to stand up and speak his mind when a rich and forceful baritone was heard throughout the amphitheater. "May I speak?"

Looking over, all the players saw a very tall man with dark skin. The man moved forward towards Kibaou and bowed to the crowd. "My name is Agil, Kibaou-san, tell me if I have this right. You're saying that because the beta testers did not take care of them, they are responsible for the deaths of many beginners right?" Kibaou nodded. "And now you want them to take responsibility for that, apologize and provide compensation correct?"

"Ye-yeah that's right." Kibaou replied, while Agil moved to retrieve something that he had on his persons, moments later he held out a book with a brown cover the same one that Naruto had in his inventory. "You got this guide book correct? It was given out at any of the item stores on the first floor."

"Sure I did but what does this have to do with what I've said?"

"This guide book was compiled from information that was provided by the beta testers." Murmurs could be heard among the crowd as the realization that the book they were holding was from the beta testers, making Naruto and Kirito both relax.

Naruto would have revealed his status without complaint, if not for the fact that he would prefer to avoid being harassed right before they fought the boss of the first floor.

Turning to the crowd, Agil spoke once again. "Everyone had equal access to this information, but many players still died. I thought the topic of discussion here was that there were some things that we could learn from their deaths and that we could use this to help us defeat the boss."

Players in the crowd gave their agreement as Agil turned back to Kibaou who simply huffed and walked to an open seat. Agil also took his seat as Diabel took the stage once more.

"So now that that is out of the way can we continue?" he asked making the other players nod their head.

Now Diabel took out his own guide book and continued with his battle strategy. "Now the latest edition of the guide book was just issued, and according to the information within it, the boss of this level is Illfang the Kobold Lord. He is guarded by three assistants that are known as Ruin Kobold Sentinels, and Illfang is armed with an axe and a buckler. He has four HP bars, and when the last one enters the red zone he will discard the axe and switch to a talwar. With this switch, his attack patterns will also change, so we need to watch out."

The other players began to marvel at the information within the guide book.

"This ends our briefing. Items will be automatically distributed, EXP goes to the party that defeats the monster, and whoever receives an item from defeating anything keeps it. Any objections?"

None could be heard, though Kibaou still looked disgruntled.

"Alright then. We leave tomorrow morning at ten, so have a good dinner and rest up for a tough fight. We'll see each other tomorrow morning."

With that said, the meeting came to an end and the parties began to leave.

* * *

After spending the night at a local inn, Naruto and his party met back up with the rest of the raid party.

If anything could be said about Diabel, it was that he was efficient.

He did a little rearranging of the parties made the previous day after thinking things over carefully. So instead of the ragtag parties from the previous day, there were two tank parties, two support parties, and three high damage assault parties. And then there was Naruto's party. It was the only one that he did not alter at all.

Personally, Naruto suspected that he knew that there was at least one beta in his party. It was the only believable explanations as to why their party was ordered to assist Kibaou in dealing with the Ruin Kobold Sentinels. He had seen the looks that Diabel shot Kirito occasionally. It was almost as if he was jealous.

He could have asked Argo what was going on, but he did not want to pay for information that would not even help him out in the long run. Besides, he did not have time to seek her out, seeing as how the raid party was ready to leave at that point.

Asuna had wanted to protest being made to assist in taking down minions, but Naruto had managed to keep her quiet until Diabel was out of sight. It was at that point that Kirito explained that they could not use the Switch and Pot strategy effective given their small numbers. Immediately following that, Naruto had to explain what that strategy was for Asuna, confirming that she had no prior experience in an MMORPG.

At eleven o'clock, the raid party left for the dungeon.

An hour and a half later, the raid party entered the dungeon.

So far, there had been no deaths during the raid. There were a few close calls. One stood out in particular. The first was when melee-type kobolds attacked the pole-arm wielders of Group F and Group G. They had been unable to defend themselves, but the quick thinking of Diabel had known how to deal with them.

As the large doors of the boss room came within sight, Naruto whispered something to Asuna that only she and Kirito could hear.

"We're going to be going up against Ruin Kobold Sentinels. They're not as strong as the boss, but they're still strong enemies that spawn around it. Most of their body is covered in metal armor, so you'll want to aim your Linear for the throat when you fight them."

She simply nodded her head from underneath the cloak, too tense to speak at the moment.

"Let's go," Diabel said quietly as he pushed the doors open with a single hand. He was followed by the entire raid party into the room.

The moment that the entire part was inside the room, the boss came out from the shadows. With a body of bulging muscles, a height of over a dozen feet, crimson bloodthirsty eyes, and coarse red fur, Illfang the Kobold Lord looked exactly as Naruto remembered him. Even the bone axe in its right hand and leather buckler in its left looked the same.

And yet, Naruto could not help but think that something looked out of place.

As the massive kobold opened its wolf-like jaws and roared, the first boss battle began. It had taken two hours and ten minutes to get through the dungeon and reach it.

As the majority of the raid party began to focus their efforts on Illfang, Groups E and G, along with Naruto's party, focused their attention on the three armor kobolds that dropped from the ceiling.

"Ukifune," Naruto said as he dashed forward and brought his sword up in a swift arc, sending one of the kobolds into the air. Immediately following it, he moved his sword in a stance much like the one Asuna took before utilizing Linear. "Suiryoku."

He thrust his katana forward, impacting upon the kobold's armor and sent it flying back. It would have taken a serious hit to its durability if he had not knocked it into the air first.

"Switch," Kirito said, drawing Naruto's attention.

He looked over just to see Asuna strike the neck of one of the kobolds with Linear. It was not a fatal blow, but it did nock the kobold's health below the halfway mark.

"I need a heavier sword," he grumbled, noticing that he had done little damage to his opponent thus far. Dashing forward, he began to use a series of rough, basic slashing attacks on his enemy. It put the kobold on the defensive. It was far too slow to do anything against them.

"Switch," Naruto said as he noticed that Asuna was just waiting for another chance to come into the fight.

He said it just as the kobold tried to attack him. As he dodged the attack, Asuna was left with an opening.

She easily thrust her rapier into the kobold's neck, leaving it just a hair from death.

"Switch," Asuna said as she jumped back.

Naruto was already ahead of her and slammed the blade of his katana into the kobold's chest, utilizing Reaver again.

It left a deep gash in the armor. But more importantly, it took the last bit of health that the kobold had, causing it to shatter like glass.

Seeing that Kibaou and his comrades were dealing with one of the other kobolds, Naruto ran at the one that Kirito was fighting and launched an attack that was rather… unorthodox.

The kobold's tail fell to the ground as Naruto's blade cut it off. The loss in health allowed Kirito to finish it off in a single blow.

"Thanks," Kirito said with a nod before he turned to look at Illfang. He was almost down to his last bar of health already, though given that thirty people were involved in the fight against Illfang, it was not too surprising.

"Keep an eye out for more kobolds," Kirito said, looking at Asuna. "They will respawn."

Without saying a word, Naruto ran towards the final kobold and jumped into the air with his katana above his head. Naruto was thankful that there was nothing stopping him from attacking from behind.

"Nadegiri," Naruto said as he brought his katana down upon the kobold's head. It was his strongest katana technique. He had only just learned to use it a few days ago. It was a testament to its power that it cut the kobold in half.

He bit back a curse when he saw that his katana was down to half its durability. Its durability had been enhanced twice since he obtained it, so he hated to imagine the kind of damage it would have sustained normally.

Kibaou did not look happy about having the kill stolen from him, but he did not say anything. His attention turned elsewhere.

Illfang roared as it threw aside his axe and shield. His hand moved back and began to draw the sword off of his back.

Without thinking, Naruto began running towards Illfang, but he was not the only one. Diabel was as well.

They each had different reasons though.

Diabel was trying to kill Illfang himself, or so it appeared.

Naruto had noticed that Illfang had been changed since the beta. He was no wielding a talwar this time. He was wielding a nodachi.

It jumped into the air and began jumping off of the support columns with incredible speed. It finally shot down towards Diabel and delivered a nasty cut before Naruto could intervene.

It went on to send him flying through the air using Ukifune.

Naruto caught Diabel before he hit the ground, and he began to pull out a potion. His health was dropping fast.

"It's too late," Diabel said, shaking his head with a grimace. "I remember seeing you… in the beta. You know what I was doing."

His voice was faint. For the first time, the realization of death in the game truly began to sink in for Naruto.

"You were going for the last attack bonus," Naruto whispered, earning a sad nod from Diabel.

"Please defeat the boss for everyone," Diabel murmured, only to shatter in shards of light as soon as he was done speaking.

Naruto slowly rose to his feet and put the potion up. His fingers were closed tightly around the hilt of his katana.

His eyes moved to Illfang with a harshness that would have surprised most people that knew him outside of the game.

"We'll all go."

Naruto saw Kirito and Asuna standing at his sides. He had not even heard their approach.

"Asuna, we'll do this just like with the sentinels," Naruto agreed, nodding his head. "Kirito and I will attack him at the same time. If we can get an opening, we'll switch with you."

Asuna nodded before she grasped her cloak and ripped it off of her body.

The light from countless torches that were the side walls seemed to gather together and shine brightly. Her glossy, long chestnut colored hair now emitted a deep golden shine, scattering the dim light in the boss's room. What had once been a constantly cloaked girl was now a very attractive girl clad in red and white.

The three of them began to rush towards Illfang. When they had crossed half the distance to the boss, it turned to face them.

The boss lowered its stance as it realized that three players were getting ready to attack him again. It gripped the Nodachi, causing it to glow a deep green in preparation to slash at a speed which could not be seen. It was a straight long-ranged move, Tsujikaze. Because it was an Iai-type move, it would have been impossible to keep up with it after it was launched, unless…

Naruto assumed the exact same position as Illfang as he ran. Tsujikaze was not unique to Illfang, after all.

Their attacks met, neutralizing each other and throwing Naruto back. He slid between his allies as they continued their assault.

Kirito led off with Vertical Arc, creating a v-shaped cut across Illfang's abdomen before he leapt to the side.

Without having to hear it verbalized, Asuna dashed forward and thrust her rapier between the lines of the _v_ that Kirito cut, using Linear.

Growling in pain, Illfang tried to bifurcate her with its massive sword when she moved away, only for Naruto to appear in front of her and block the attack with his katana.

Even though he knew it was not real, Naruto could not help but feel his arms burn from holding back such a powerful attack. If he kept it up, he knew that his katana would break.

Fortunately, Kirito saw his chance.

Leaping into the air over the nodachi, Kirito brought his sword down on top of the large kobold, using the Sonic Leap skill.

Unfortunately, it did not kill Illfang, but it did drop his health to about one-fourth of a bar. And more importantly, it threw Illfang back, taking the pressure off of Naruto's katana.

Without missing a beat, Naruto and Asuna both stepped forward and thrust their swords into Illfang's abdomen, using Suiryoku and Linear respectively. Before Illfang could react, Kirito jumped into the air and used Slant to behead the massive kobold.

Much to the relief of everyone in the room, Illfang's health was depleted completely when it lost its head, causing it to shatter into shards of light.

Out of the corner of his eye, Naruto saw Kirito receive a notification that he had received the final hit. He idly wondered what the reward for that was.

As the boss fully disappeared, the remaining Sentinels that had respawned seemed to have scattered into the void as well.

The hue of the shining torches on the walls changed from a gloomy orange into a bright yellow. The dimness in the boss's room was removed at once, and a cool wind swept across the room, taking away the heat of the battle.

The silence was not broken by many. Most of the players in the room had collapsed as the adrenaline seemed to wear off. Even so, it was hard to miss the eyes that wandered around the room quite often. It was almost as if they were worried that the terrifying boss was capable of reviving.

Naruto looked over his shoulder as a small white hand was placed upon it. It was only then that he realized that he had yet to lower his sword. Asuna was standing there, her long chestnut hair waving in the breeze.

He could barely stop from looking at her. She was without a doubt one of the most attractive girls he had met. She certainly did not look like the type to end up trapped in a video game.

After what seemed like a long time, she whispered, "Thanks for your help."

Naruto just nodded, unsure if she meant when they first met or when he defended her against the boss. It did not really matter in the end to him though.

He saw that she also flashed a smile at Kirito, seemingly offering her thanks without words.

It was at that moment that everything truly sunk in for Naruto. The first floor, which had confined eight thousand players for the past month, had finally been cleared.

And, as if my system was awaiting that recognition, a new message appeared in his view, revealing his experience gained, the distribution of Col, and items obtained.

Everyone's expressions lightened up as they saw the same thing.

Cheers could be heard. Some people threw both hands up in the air. Some embraced their comrades. Some danced nonsensically. In the storm of uproar, a large figure slowly got off the floor and walked over towards Naruto's party with his eyes specifically on Kirito. It was the man that stood up for beta-testers back at the meeting, Agil.

"That was excellent work and brilliant sword skills. Congratulations, this victory is rightfully yours."

At that moment, someone else decided to make himself heard, however.

"Why?!"

Suddenly, that loud shout burst out from behind towards the doors. As they turned halfway around, they saw that is was Kibaou, the same man that had opposed beta-testers back at the meeting.

"Why, did you leave Diabel-san to die?!"

"Let him die?" Kirito asked, noticing that Kibaou was looking directly at him.

"That's right! Because you knew the skills the boss used! If you gave us that information from the start, Diabel wouldn't have died!"

Speaking as if he was vomiting blood, the remaining raid members began to mumble.

"Now that you mention it..."

"Why...? It wasn't even written in the strategy guide..."

Slowly and gradually, such questions began to spread across the room.

It was Kibaou that spoke to answer them.

"I... I know! He's a beta tester! That is why. The boss's attack patterns, good hunting spots, and quests… he knows all of them! He hid them despite knowing about them!"

Angry chattering could be heard instantly, but it was interrupted by the mace user who had served as a tank with Agil until the end. He raised his hand and spoke in a calm tone.

"Even so, the guide that was handed out yesterday contained only information on the attack patterns that the boss used during the beta period, right? If he was really a beta tester, wouldn't his knowledge be the same as in the guide?"

It was a member of Diabel's party that spoke next. "That strategy guide was a lie. Argo's information shop was selling lies. That person was a beta tester after all, there's no way she would have given us the truth for free."

The moment those words were spoken, Naruto knew that things had just gone from bad to worse. The ones that had played in the Closed Beta were already getting a stigma attached to them for not helping the newer players when the whole ordeal began. But that stigma was nothing compared to the hostilities that could flare up if the character of all the testers was called into question.

Naruto opened his mouth to speak, but Kirito shot him a look that he recognized all too well. He had something he wished to say.

He took a step forward with an impudent expression, and coolly looked at Kibaou. He shrugged his shoulders and spoke in an apathetic voice.

"Beta tester, was it? Don't lump me together with those amateurs."

Confusion filled the room at Kirito's words. Even Naruto looked dumbstruck.

"Listen here and remember this. Sword Art Online's Closed Beta had a ridiculously low pass rate for the lottery draw. Out of the one thousand people, how many real MMO gamers do you think got selected? Most of them were just newbie players that didn't even know methods of leveling properly. You guys here are much better than that lot."

At the end of his contemptuous words, everyone fell silent simultaneously. A chill, like the atmosphere before fighting the boss, returned, forming into invisible knives brushing across their skin.

"But, I'm not like those guys."

Sneering, he opened his mouth and broke the silence.

"During the beta test, I reached floors that no one else could reach. I fought enemies with Katana skills way higher than this floor. I know way more other things too. Not even an information broker could hope to match me."

Kibaou pointed at Kirito in shock. "That's… no longer on the level of a beta tester. That's totally cheating! You're just a cheater!"

From around them, they heard calls of _cheater, cheating beta tester_, and other such names. But one stuck above all others.

"Beater… that has a good ring to it," Kirito remarked

Laughing and grinning, he looked around at everybody in that area and spoke in a clear voice.

"Exactly. I am a Beater. From now on, please do not lump me together with those former testers."

Naruto instantly understood what Kirito was doing. He was painting a target on him and making the other beta testers look like amateurs. As much as it annoyed him to hear Kirito essentially talking bad about him, he knew that it would actually make beta testers more widely accepted.

It still presented one thing that Naruto did not like though. It practically guaranteed that Kirito would have a difficult time being accepted by anyone from that point on.

Given his preference for playing solo, that might not have been such a bad thing though.

Kirito opened the main menu and began to flip through it, drawing even more attention.

In an instant, his body was wrapped in a small glowing light. As it faded, a coat of shiny black leather that fell to his knees appeared over his clothes.

He waved the black long coat with a flourish and headed towards the small door further inside the boss room.

"I'll go on and activate the second floor's transfer gate. From the exit up there, it will be a short walk to the district town. If you want to come along, be prepared to be killed by any mob that comes along."

He stepped forward with large strides and pushed the door to the second floor open.

Asuna looked like she was tempted to follow after him, but she took a look at Naruto and decided to stay where she was.

"Let's wait a few minutes, and then we'll go," Naruto said quietly, making sure that only she heard him. "It wouldn't be a good idea to waste what he did by looking like we're the same."

Asuna nodded before she decided to ask a question that had been bothering her.

"During the fight, you called me by my name…."

"Yeah, I did," Naruto said, not sure as to what she was getting at. "That's what it says next to your health bar. Did I say it wrong?" He pointed to the spot where she would have seen her health bar as she spoke.

Astonishment crossed her face at that revelation.

"Naruto… your name has been there this whole time?" Asuna asked, still stunned. Below Naruto's name, she saw Kirito, though it disappeared after a few seconds.

"Yeah," Naruto said, chuckling.

It seemed to take all her effort for Asuna not to start giggling at the revelation.

Naruto just shook his head as he looked at her. It was hard to believe that she was the same girl that he had met two days earlier.

A few minutes later, Naruto and Asuna were the first ones to follow Kirito's path out of the dungeon. Everyone else seemed intent on making sure they fully recovered before they left to do the same.

It would not be long before the news was spread to the remaining eight thousand players. The first floor was cleared. Now, they only had ninety-nine to go.

* * *

Author's Note: And that's the second chapter.

I'm kind of glad to get that out of the way. I was trying to keep this part pretty similar to canon with Naruto added to it, and it was a little frustrating at part. I'll have plenty of time to do my own stuff now though. I don't intend on doing time-skips the way the anime does, after all. That'll give me plenty of time to develop the characters. Asuna didn't have much of a role in the first half of this chapter, so I'll be glad to flesh her out more.

Anyways, thanks for reading and reviewing my story. I'll try to get another chapter out as soon as I can. At least part of Naruto's history will be revealed soon.


	3. Urbus

**3. Urbus**

A few hours after the first floor was cleared, Naruto and Asuna reached Urbus City.

It was the largest city on the second floor, so it was no surprise that the pair had decided to head that way.

Personally, Naruto's main reason for heading there was rather simple. He needed to get his equipment repaired. Given that he was still wearing the cloth armor that he started the game wearing, he thought it might be a good idea to do a little shopping as well.

"Do you think Kirito-san will be alright?"

The sudden question caught Naruto off guard, but it did not last long. "Kirito is pretty good at what he does. He did not have to exaggerate too much when he talked about his abilities. And you don't really have to use suffixes with screen names. Most people don't."

"You knew him from _before_, didn't you?" she asked, making him wonder if she was ignoring his remark about suffixes.

"Yeah, I did," Naruto admitted. "I don't know how long ago I've known him though. He looks really familiar. But anyways, we met on floor one back in August. Even back then, he was pretty good. We mostly played solo until we reached the eighth floor. After that, we worked together in a party. As far as I know, we were the only two to reach the tenth floor."

"So you were just as far as he was?" Asuna asked as surprise flitted across her face.

"Yeah, we did, but I was a couple levels higher than him. It's hard to believe that we cleared nine floors in the time it's taken us to do one floor this time around," Naruto said, shaking his head.

"Why did it take so long?" Asuna asked, frowning slightly.

"It shouldn't have taken so long. I guess you could say that there are just too many players. It's harder to increase your level faster when so many people are competing for the best spots for grinding and the best quests. Argo told me that the raid consisted almost entirely of level ten players. There were only five players of a higher level there. Those players probably could have beaten the boss without a raid group, but it's not as risky when you have a big number advantage."

"Do you think it will take as long to clear the second floor?" Asuna asked.

"I doubt it," Naruto answered without hesitation. "Despite his high strength stat, Illfang was only a level eleven or twelve monster. The boss of the second floor should be Baran the General Taurus. He wielded a two-handed war hammer in the beta. He wasn't much stronger than Illfang then. So while he might not be much stronger, we're still at an early enough level that it won't take us long to level up quickly."

"I'm actually a level thirteen right now," Asuna said, looking through her stats.

"That's good to hear. I'm only two levels higher than you then," Naruto said, grinning. He had been a little worried that she was only a level ten. It was easier to rely on someone that was close to him in level. "Between the two of us, I bet we could map out the entire dungeon in a single day. If we could manage that, our levels should be high enough to let us take down the boss by ourselves. It might be good to get at least one other person to help us in that fight though. You never know when a boss will be alone or when it will have minions. It was just the boss in the beta, but as we saw, not everything is the same."

Asuna nodded with a smile. "Can we go and try to map the dungeon out today? It's only three o'clock."

"Tomorrow," Naruto said, shaking his head. "There's a quest on this floor that you would find useful. The reward is _Wind Fleuret_. It was the strongest rapier you could get on the first five floors in the beta. When I asked Argo to sell it for me, that's what she claimed, at least. We should do that quest so you can get a better sword. Then we can map the dungeon out tomorrow and hopefully take on the boss the next day."

Asuna looked down at her rapier. It was the cheapest rapier that could be found in the game. It was why she had been able to buy five of them so easily. A better quality sword would definitely be useful.

"Let's head to one of the armor shops in town first. After that, we should go to a weapons shop and get our weapons fixed. Even if you're going to get a better sword tonight, it never hurts to have spares. If your weapon's durability ever drops to zero, it will be destroyed."

Asuna nodded, taking in that information. She had learned a great deal of information about the game in the last month, but there was still so much that she did not know.

The pair entered an armor shop a few minutes later. Seeing that they were the only players in the shop, Naruto pulled open his menu and moved to his skills. Three of his four skill slots were in use. One-Handed Curved Sword, Katana, and Martial Arts were the skills he was currently employing.

"What skills do you have?" he asked.

She opened her menu as well, allowing him to see One-Handed Straight Sword and Rapier. She had two empty skill slots.

"If you want, you can remove One-Handed Straight Sword and free up another slot," Naruto said, touching and holding his finger on one of his skills. The option to remove it popped up. "If you're only going to use a Rapier, you can remove it from your skill slots. Since you're a sweeper- that means you rely on speed in fights- you might want to consider going with Leather Equipment. It'll slow you down a little more than cloth armor will, but it'll give you some more protection. You could also go with Light Metal Equipment, but I wouldn't get that unless you only plan on using a breastplate or something. Anything more than that will slow you down too much."

Nodding, Asuna removed One-Handed Straight Sword from her skill slots.

"Now, you can go ahead and look through the skills and pick three that you want to use," Naruto said.

"What would you recommend?" Asuna asked.

"It won't help us clear the game any faster, but I'd suggest you choose _Cooking_ as one of them. It'll make things a lot more comfortable. After that, you might want to consider Parry, one of the armor-related skills, or something like Acrobatics or Sprint.

Nodding, Asuna chose Cooking and Parry. She closed the menu without picking a final skill though.

"I'll see what they have before I choose," she said, by way of explanation.

Nodding, Naruto began to look at what the NPC shop carried. Cloth armor was something that was a little tricky. It was not the deal type of armor for anyone to use solely. The main reason behind that was that its quality did not vary much from floor to floor. Players could make better cloth armor by obtaining uncommon materials, but those materials were not easily found before the twenty-fifth floor. Even so Sweepers did tend to use cloth armor early on to let them move quickly, but most also used leather or light metal armor in addition to it. For the time being, Naruto did not intend on doing that though.

Instead, he chose a pair of black boots that came up a third of the way to his knee, black pants, a burnt orange tunic with long sleeves, and a pair of black fingerless gloves.

It would work for now.

Turning once he equipped his new clothes, he saw that Asuna had already equipped her new gear as well. She had evidently invested in Light Metal Equipment, judging by the Copper Breastplate that covered her chest. Apart from that, she wore a sleeveless white tunic that fell just below her thighs with red trim, long red gloves, white tights, and red boots that fell just short of her knees with metal plates on each foot.

"I thought maybe you'd cut down on the orange," Asuna remarked with a hint of a smile. Mirth could be seen in her eyes, making Naruto smile in return.

"You just wished you looked this good in orange," Naruto teased, making Asuna look away with a hint of pink in her cheeks.

"Let's just go and get our swords fixed," she said as she turned around and made her way out of the door.

Chuckling, Naruto followed her, opening up his menu to see his Col as he did so. From the looks of it, he would have just over ten thousand once his sword was fixed. He did not spend any more money than he needed to, so it was easy to save up.

"There are already other players here," Naruto remarked once he left the store. He could see green cursors above several heads already. The cursor only showed up on fellow players, so it was easy to tell who was another player and who was an NPC. The cursors were not really noticeable unless he was looking for them though.

"How did they get here so fast?" Asuna asked, looking to Naruto, her earlier embarrassment forgotten already.

"They probably teleported here as soon as they heard the news that the first floor was clear," Naruto answered. "There are teleportation gates in the City of Beginning after all. Let's just head to the weapon shop before it gets crowded."

"Right," Asuna said, nodding her head in understanding. "I think I see a shop up ahead."

It did not take them long to get Naruto's _Ebony Blade_ and Asuna's five rapiers repaired. The shop did not really have any really good equipment, so they did not buy anything from there.

Within moments of departing the shop, Naruto wished that he had taken a different course of action.

"Naruto! Is that you?"

With a groan, Naruto turned and saw Inuzuka Kiba walking towards him. They were classmates back in the real world. He had been unaware that the dog enthusiast had gotten his hands on Sword Art Online. He knew that Kiba was a gamer though. Apart from the simple set of black clothes with a leather coat and some kind of red fang-like tattoos on his cheeks, he looked just as Naruto remembered him.

"What are you doing here?" Naruto asked, not even bothering to act polite. They got along well enough in school, but neither had ever considered the other a friend.

"I'm stuck here, obviously," Kiba said, snorting. "Are you some kind of dumbass?"

"What do you want?" Naruto asked, looking at Kiba flatly. It was a good thing that he was using his real name in the game instead of some screen name. Otherwise, everyone that heard Kiba yell would have known his given name.

"Don't act so tough. You can't intimidate me."

Naruto snorted and pulled open the main menu. A few clicked buttons accomplished what he wanted.

"Prove it."

The moment those words came out of Naruto's mouth, a screen appeared in front of Kiba. A challenge had just been issued.

"I'll duel you, and I'll kick your ass while I'm at it," Kiba said as he pressed the accept button.

In the air between them, a timer appeared with their names underneath it. Well, Naruto's name was there. Kiba's name was listed as Akamaru.

Naruto was thankful that Kiba had chosen _Half Loss_ as the type of duel. The winner was literally whoever took the other person's health down to the halfway mark. He could have gone for _First Strike_ instead, but Naruto had the feeling that he wanted to try to embarrass him. _Total Loss_ was the only bad duel option. Naturally, it ended once one person lost all their health. In a death game, it meant that one player would really die.

He walked into the middle of the street so that he would have more room to move around.

Between them, the time counted down from _sixty_. Once it reached zero, they would be able to begin the duel.

"What kind of noob are you?" Kiba laughed as he took a One-Handed War Hammer out. "You actually used your real name? No one is going to take someone seriously that doesn't even come up with a screen name."

Naruto noticed that Asuna was glaring at Kiba. Either she was getting angry on his behalf, or she was using her real name as well.

He thought the latter was more likely.

Naruto did not get mad at the jibe though. He knew that he had far more experience in the game than Kiba did, and he did not feel like explaining that he only used his real name because he could not come up with a cool screen name off the top of his head.

That was the normal explanation he gave, at least. There was another reason too though. Ever since he started playing the beta, he had felt as though the real him only surfaced inside the game. It would have felt strange to him to go by a different name because of that.

"And you chose to go with the name of your pet dog. I'd rather be a noob than a puppy any day. Or, in your case, a whiny little bitch."

Kiba looked pissed at that point and had begun to ready his war hammer.

Yet, Naruto did not even reach for his katana.

"Are you going to go for your katana or not?" Kiba asked in a tone that expressed annoyance. He was standing there with his war hammer in hand, glancing at the timer. It was down to twenty seconds.

"Is there some reason I should?" Naruto asked with a mocking smile. He used to react badly every time someone teased or taunted him, but he learned how to deal with it over the years.

The moment that the timer reached zero, Kiba rushed towards Naruto and swung the hammer down with all his might. It was easy for Naruto simply sidestep the attack though.

Seeing Kiba's exposed back, Naruto readied his counter attack. His right hand glowed blue momentarily before he used Embracer, driving his fingers into his classmate's back. It was not that strong of an attack normally, but it was strong enough drop Kiba's health bar twenty percent.

Kiba dropped to the ground and put a hand over the injury. Though it was a game, it felt quite real.

"What kind of Sword Skill was that?" Kiba asked as he rose back to his feet, getting ready in case Naruto attacked.

"That's _Martial Arts_. It's an extra skill that you can only get on this floor," Naruto said, making a Kiba look stunned. Surprisingly, an audience had not gathered around them. Not enough players were there to attract too much attention. "You might like to pretend that you're some _Alpha_, but you might want to keep something in mind. Sometimes it's better to be a _Beta_ than an _Alpha_."

"You're a beta?" Kiba asked in shock, looking at Naruto in bewilderment.

"And I was actually part of the raid that cleared the first floor," Naruto replied. "You shouldn't say that someone's a noob just because of their name. And besides, what's the point in making a big deal about it now. This is more than just a game now."

With that, Naruto dashed towards Kiba and used Embracer before he could react. It resulted in a critical hit, taking away thirty percent of Kiba's health and ending the duel.

It was that point that Naruto started walking down the street away from his classmate.

Before he got too far, Asuna was at his side again.

"Friend of yours?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I go to school with him," Naruto corrected. "I didn't really talk about the game of the fact that I was a beta to anyone, so it's not surprising that he didn't know."

Asuna did not say anything else, just listening carefully.

"We're not all that close. I'm glad to see that he's still alive though. I haven't gone to the Monument of Life yet because I really don't want to risk seeing someone I know crossed off on it," Naruto admitted. He shook his head almost instantly. "Let's just get going. The sooner we complete that quest, the sooner we can get some rest before tomorrow."

"That was really impressive."

Naruto groaned as he heard the voice come from behind him.

Turning, he saw a girl with short brown hair that was wearing a red tunic, a pink skirt, and the starting brown vest. A one-handed war hammer could be seen at her hip.

"I was wondering if I could join your party for a little while. I'm still trying to get used to the game, and I heard you say you were a beta, so…."

Naruto and Asuna looked at each other briefly before nodding their heads.

"If you want, you can come with us. I don't mind helping out. I'm Naruto, by the way. And this is Asuna."

"It's nice to meet you two," she replied. "My name is Lisbeth."

Nodding, Naruto touched her cursor and sent her an invitation to their party. "We're going on a quest now. I'll show you some pointers if you want to come with us."

Just like that, Naruto's party of two grew to three.

* * *

Author's Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing. I've definitely enjoyed writing this so far.


	4. Baran the General Taurus

**4. Baran the General Taurus**

The quest to obtain the Wind Fleuret was pretty simple. To obtain it, the player had to collect a few rare herbs and turn them in to the NPC. It took maybe an hour to complete at best.

Once they were done with that, Naruto, Asuna, and Lisbeth spent the rest of the day training. He would have taken Asuna to where he believed the final dungeon was and trained with her there, but Lisbeth had been a level nine when she joined them, so fighting lower level monsters at first seemed like a good idea.

Normally, he would have liked to only play with characters of a similar level to him, but Asuna seemed to hit it off with Lisbeth rather well. She was actually a rather likeable person from what he had seen. On the plus side, she was building her character as a blacksmith, so she would be a beneficial part of their team once she trained her smithing skills.

Now, the trio was spending the night at an inn. It was in Talan Village, the closest town to the final dungeon of the second floor. Assuming that the dungeon had not been moved, at least.

Naruto opened his menu and looked at his skills. Previously, he had selected One-Handed Curved Sword, Katana, and Martial Arts. Earlier in the day, however, he had removed One-Handed Curved Sword and added Battle Healing and Light Metal Equipment. His Katana and Martial Arts skills were definitely his highest two with Battle Healing being around level twenty and Light Metal Equipment not having been trained at all yet. He did not have any Light Armor though, so he could not train that skill until he obtained some.

The sound of footsteps alerted him to the fact that he was not alone.

Turning, he saw that it was Asuna.

"Is everything okay?" she asked with a concerned look on her face.

"Yeah, I'm just thinking," he said, shaking his head. "We've been in the game for nearly a month already. I wonder what's going on out there in the real world."

She nodded, understanding in her eyes.

"I was by myself when I starting playing the game. My godfather's always traveling, promoting his books and getting inspiration to write more," he told her, letting out a derisive snort.

"What about your parents?" she asked curiously.

"I can't even remember them. They decided to go and see a movie while my godfather was looking after me. Apparently, they were mugged on the way home. No one's sure who did it."

Asuna clearly realized that she had touched upon a subject that was not discussed, so she quickly changed the subject. "Your godfather's a writer?"

"Yeah, he calls himself a romance author," Naruto laughed. "He hates it when I point out that his books are labeled as erotica."

Asuna looked as though she was caught between laughing and looking shocked.

"They're pretty popular, which is why I don't see him that much. He always made sure I'm provided for though," Naruto confessed. He was not sure why he was telling her all that. He generally believed the rule of revealing nothing about his offline life to anyone he met in a game, but Sword Art Online was no longer a game to him.

"He's probably with you right now," she told him, earning a smile.

"I'm sure your parents are with you right now too," he told her. It did not escape his attention that she nodded but looked down, a look of confliction in her eyes.

"So do you know anyone else who is playing?" Asuna asked curiously.

"Well, I only really knew Kirito and Argo in the Beta. I met several others, but I didn't really get to know them that well. And the only person in real life that I know is playing is Kiba, or Akamaru as his screen name says. There might be five others from my class in the game, now that I think about it," Naruto said, growing deep in thought. "Two of them are gamers and were interested in the game, but they probably wouldn't bother trying to clear the game. They'd be too busy trying to find food to eat and watch clouds. There's another guy that likes games too, but he never said if he was going to play Sword Art Online. There are also these two girls that like him, and I wouldn't put it past them to play in the hopes that he likes gamer girls. I don't know if any of them will be here for sure though."

"Maybe you'll meet them later on," Asuna suggested, trying to sound encouraging.

"It would be nice," he agreed. "So what about you? Do you have any friends playing?"

"Not really," she told him, looking a little sheepish. Her next words explained why. "I'm actually using my brother's NerveGear. He was called away on an unexpected trip, so he couldn't play. A friend of his might be playing, but me playing wasn't planned."

Naruto could barely hide his amusement at hearing that. To hear that they were only able to meet because of something like that… it was not something that he had expected in the least.

"Well, you have a friend here now," Naruto said, jabbing his thumb into his chest.

"You do too," she told him with a genuine smile that made him wonder if she had any friends outside of the game. "Now come on, I just made dinner. It's probably not the best, but I'm working on my Cooking level."

With a smile, Naruto followed her and ate dinner with her and Lisbeth. It was actually pretty bad, but he could not complain when he was spending time with his new friends.

* * *

As luck would have it, the dungeon was just as Naruto remembered. It took them six hours to completely map the dungeon out, but they were not resting within sight of the door to the final room of the dungeon. The boss was no doubt waiting for them on the other side of the doors.

Opening his menu, he saw that he was level eighteen. It had taken some serious grinding to increase his level three times in the past two days, but there was a difference between difficult and impossible. Looking at his skills, he saw that his Katana skill was at three hundred, his Martial Arts skill was at two hundred, his Battle Healing was at fifty, and his Light Metal Equipment was still at one. They were pretty good levels for this part of the game.

Asuna and Lisbeth had done just as much grinding as he had, so he expected them to be, respectively, around level sixteen and thirteen.

"This is going to be a tricky fight," Asuna said, looking over at Naruto. "I'm not sure we can handle this on our own if the boss has minions."

"Just remember what we talked about last night after dinner," Naruto told her, reminding her of the discussion they had on strategy. He had wanted them to know exactly how to handle the situation ahead of time.

Asuna nodded, visibly relaxing.

"Is everyone rested up?" Naruto asked, looking between the two girls.

As one, they nodded and rose to their feet.

Before they could make their way to the doors, they heard a voice.

"Looks like I'm right on time."

Naruto quickly recognized the massive man as Agil. He had helped them clear the first floor and had shown himself to be a skilled player.

"I thought I'd train some in here before too many others reached this dungeon. Imagine my surprise when I find a pathway without a single monster on it," Agil remarked with a shake of his head. "I didn't expect another floor to be cleared so soon, especially not by such a small group. If it wasn't for the fact that I saw two of you fight the boss of the first floor, I'd call it suicidal. But now, I'm just wondering if you have room for my axe?"

Naruto smiled. The man struck him as genuine from the moment he heard him speak at the meeting on the first floor, and he could not deny that the man's battleaxe would come in handy.

But Naruto was not about to take any chances either.

"What's your level?"

"Fifteen," Agil told him without missing a beat.

"In that case, you can join our party," Naruto said, sending the man an invite. "This makes a change of plans. Asuna, you'll be working with me. Agil, you'll be with Lisbeth. If there are minions, I want you two to handle them. Otherwise, we'll work together against the boss."

"Right," his teammates said, nodding their heads.

Together, they approached the doors and Naruto pushed them open. Sitting atop a throne made of bones, they saw a massive taurus wielding a gigantic war hammer.

They slowly began to approach it as they saw its health bar above the behemoth's head. It was hard to tell a difference in the strength difference between Baran and Illfang, but that was not something that was difficult to discover outside of battle.

Before they got too far into the room, Baran the General Taurus rose to its feet and four smaller taurus fell from the sky and landed between them and the boss.

"They'll respawn once you kill them, so watch out. Stay away from the boss at all times if you can though. Its _Numbing Impact_ will send a paralyzing shockwave through anything it hits. All taurus in the game have that ability, but when they do it, it only paralyzes what they directly hit."

He only spoke for Agil's benefit, having already told Asuna and Lisbeth about it when they discussed strategy the previous night.

Naruto and Asuna exchanged a look, and then they acted in unison.

Naruto ran directly at the minions with his sword drawn. Asuna was directly behind him with her rapier out.

Right before Naruto needed to engage in combat, Agil and Lisbeth single-handedly killed the two taurus in their way.

Without missing a beat, Naruto continued to speed towards the boss with his katana in its ready position.

"Suiryoku," Naruto said, thrusting the blade towards the monster's exposed thigh. The blade easily sunk into the leg, but he was forced to pull his sword free and jump back as the monster's massive hand attempted to bat Naruto off to the side.

"Switch," Naruto said, running as though he was going to attempt to flank the monster. It drew Baran's eyes away from Asuna. In fact, it caused the monster to turn to face Naruto, perceiving him as the threat.

"Linear," Asuna said as she used her signature attack. Her attack enabled her to attack the legs of the taurus, effectively hamstringing it. Unfortunately, it did not quite affect the taurus as it would have in real life.

The taurus roared and spun around, attempting to destroy the attacker with a solid blow from his hammer.

Asuna managed to duck under the hammer just in time, but she was unable to dodge the attack completely. When the hammer made contact with the ground not too far from her, it released a paralyzing shockwave. Naruto was able to jump over it as it neared him, but Asuna was not able to.

Baran raised his war hammer once more, intent on smashing Asuna in one blow while she was immobilized.

When it was only a few feet above her head, Naruto reached her. He took her in his arms, having sheathed his katana, and ran out of the range of the attack. Not even the shockwave was able to reach him.

"Sorry about that, Asuna," he told her, glaring at the boss over his shoulder. "I shouldn't have left your side. But don't worry. I'm not going to let that bastard so much as touch you."

Immediately after he spoke, Agil and Lisbeth reached him, taking the still paralyzed girl from him.

"We'll protect her until she's able to move," Agil told him.

Nodding, Naruto rushed towards Baran, not even bothering to draw his sword. His right hand was glowing red as he moved, his motion input recognizing his intent from the very beginning. He ducked underneath the swing of the monster's weapon and jumped up, kicking off of the monster's leg in the process.

"Embracer," he said as he drove his right hand into the bicep of the boss. Even as the taurus let out a cry, Naruto was not done. He grabbed on to the monster's arm with his other hand, pulled his right hand free, drew his katana, and brought it around in a smooth arc.

He fell to the ground along with the massive war hammer that the taurus had been using. It now only had one arm.

There was no time to celebrate though. The massive taurus kicked out with one of its feet, making contact with his chest. He was rocketed through the air and slammed into one of the walls of the room. He watched as his health dropped to seventy-five percent. If he was hit with too many more of those, he would be dead. Disarming the boss definitely did not make it powerless.

In fact, he saw that its health was still at seventy percent.

"I guess it's a good thing I never got around to soloing a boss," he muttered, looking at his katana. It was halfway across the room, having dropped it when Baran kicked him.

His sword suddenly slid towards him, and he saw that Agil had sent it sliding with a kick.

"Linear," Asuna called out, drawing his attention to his partner. Apparently, the paralysis had worn off already.

Naruto slowly rose to his feet and began to run towards the taurus, watching as Asuna stabbed and skillfully evaded his blows with her graceful agility. She was still hit occasionally, but her health appeared to be higher than his all the same.

As he neared the boss, Naruto jumped and flipped his katana around. He thrust the blade through the middle of Baran's back, using the backhanded grip. When he saw that the attack took fifteen percent of the monster's health away, he realized that it had been a critical hit. The only attack of his that had done more was the Embracer combined with the simple slash that removed its arm, and severed limbs always did more damage.

Even with Asuna's assault of Linear after Linear after he had been injured, Baran's health only dropped to fifty percent.

Naruto kicked off of Baran's back and did a back flip, gracefully landing away from it.

With a roar, Baran turned around and tried to crush Naruto with a single punch. It was a simple matter to sidestep it, though the resulting shockwave nearly made him fall to the ground. Thankfully, he could not use Numbing Impact without his hammer.

Naruto quickly readied his katana and used Tsujikaze, despite the close range. The Iai-type Sword Skill was supposed to be a long ranged move, but the blade of air that was generated with the swing of the blade could be used to supplement a close-ranged strike too.

Baran was nearly left helpless as it lost its second arm, but Naruto knew that it could still kick hard. The point was driven home as Baran lashed out and kicked him towards the wall a second time.

Unlike the first time, however, he managed to do a flip and slid backwards before he could slam into the wall. His health dropped to fifty percent from the attack nonetheless.

"Nadegiri," Naruto said as he charged towards Baran and leapt through the air. With a single swing, he left a long gash down the monster's front.

"Linear," Asuna said as she drove her sword through Baran's back, earning a critical hit.

It was timed perfectly so that Asuna's strike landed just after his did, causing her rapier to emerge from Baran's frontal injury.

Their assault dropped the monster's health to twenty-five percent. It seemed that Baran's programming saw that as a trigger though.

Suddenly, Baran hopped off the ground and delivered a powerful kick to both Naruto and Asuna.

Naruto recognized that it was an even stronger kick than he had been hit with earlier, so he hastily held his katana in the way, attempting to block it. He could tell that he was not fast enough to outright dodge it.

The hoof slammed into his katana with incredible force. It actually appeared as though he would be able to withstand it at first, but the force of the kick began to push him back. Then his katana snapped in half and the hoof struck him in the chest. It happened over the space of a few seconds, but it seemed as though it happened in slow motion to Naruto.

Slamming into the wall with destructive force, Naruto watched as his health bar dropped to twenty-five percent.

Grunting, he rose to his feet, knowing that he could not sit back idly. He saw that Asuna's health bar had dropped even lower than his had. Despite that, she was already rising to her feet. If one thing was to be said about Asuna, she was a tough girl.

"Shit," Naruto muttered as he watched Baran run towards him, intent on smashing him into the wall.

Naruto quickly began to run towards the General Taurus. He knew two things in that moment. One, the fight needed to end soon. And two, he would have to end it unarmed. His katana had been destroyed, after all.

With surprising skill, Naruto slid between the boss's legs and used Embracer to stab it in the left leg. He quickly spun around and began to punch, kick, and strike the injured leg with his elbows and knees.

"Switch," he said, quickly jumping to the side as Baran began to spin around.

Baran attempted to kick out at Naruto with the injured leg, but there was no one there for it to hit.

Seeing the injured leg and hearing Naruto's command, Asuna attacked from an angle using her Linear.

The continued assault on the injured limb took down a considerable amount of health, but the fight was not over yet.

Naruto used Asuna's attack to move unnoticed. Once he was behind Baran, he jumped into the air and used Embracer, delivering a thrust of his hand into the back of the massive taurus. A single critical hit was all that was needed.

He let out a sigh of relief when he saw the health bar of his foe drop to nothing, but it was nothing compared to the elation he felt when it shattered into crystals and faded away.

A message popped up before them a moment later, revealing that the second floor had been cleared. Likewise, they received messages informing them of the distribution of drops and Col.

Naruto's message included a notice that he had scored the Last Attack Bonus. Because of that, he received something called Fallen Samurai Armor.

Naruto looked at his rare drop curiously before he went ahead and equipped it. It was a simple piece of armor that covered his torso. It was definitely Japanese armor, though he was not entirely sure what its proper name was. It was dark gray in color and was held up by cord-like straps that rested on his shoulders.

In addition to the armor, he had received _General Taurus Horn_ and a large amount of Col. Apparently, he had received enough experience to jump up to level nineteen. Beating a boss with only one other person helping could do that though.

"That was a close one," Agil said, shaking his head. Naruto could see that his health had dropped to forty percent, whereas Lisbeth's was hovering above the fifty percent mark. "A little too close for comfort."

"It was," Naruto agreed with a grimace. Seeing his health at twenty-five percent and Asuna's at twenty percent hit home how much he had underestimated the boss. If he had entered the boss room with just Asuna and Lisbeth, he suspected that at least one person in the party would be dead. "We were too reckless. We may have cleared the second floor by ourselves, but it was stupid. If we keep it up, we're going to die."

Asuna and Lisbeth looked down while Agil nodded grimly.

"So we'll just have to be more careful," Naruto said, shaking his head. His words seemed to lighten the atmosphere. "We'll just have to do things differently the next time around." He then turned to look at Agil. "So are you going to be sticking with us, or do you have other plans?"

"I might stick with you guys a little while longer, if that's okay with you," Agil said, looking at them questioningly.

"It's fine with me," Naruto told him. Asuna and Lisbeth vocally agreed. "Welcome to the team. You can stay for as long as you want."

With nothing else that they needed to do, they made their way through the doors to the third floor.

There were still ninety-eight floors that needed to be cleared before they could log out, but it seemed like they had made a good start.

* * *

Author's Note: I definitely owe you guys a big apology. It's been something like five months since I last updated, and I'm truly sorry for that. I don't even have an excuse. I also apologize that this chapter is not quite up to my usual standard. Comparing this to Chapter 2 shows me exactly how much my ability to write fights for this fandom have digressed. I should be able to get back to snuff before too long though.

Now, I'm sure you guys have noticed the name change of the story. The sole reason behind it is because I planned on him having the Unique Skill, Blade Mastery. I change my mind when I started looking the story over so I could write this chapter.

Oh, and before I forget... I'd like to explain Naruto's armor that he received in this chapter. The armor is actually what Danzo Shimura wore in the flashback of when Sarutobi was named the Third Hokage. Go to the Second Hokage's Narutopedia page if you want to see it. The only difference is that the armored chestpiece that Naruto has does not extend below his waist.

Anyways, thanks for reading and reviewing. If you have any input you'd life to offer, feel free to do so.


	5. Change of Pace

**5. Change of Pace**

"Are you looking for something special?"

Naruto turned and looked at Agil. They had cleared the second floor a little under an hour ago and were currently in the nearest town to the exit of the second floor labyrinth. They had activated the Teleport Gate before making their way to the weapon shop, yet very few players had used it so far.

"The boss destroyed my katana, so I need a new one. I'd rather not go back to the first floor and do the quest to get another copy of my last sword, so I'll settle for one from here," Naruto told him as he looked through the NPC's shop.

"I must have missed that. It explains why you landed the Last Attack without a weapon out at least," Agil commented.

"If I hadn't used the sword to block that attack, I might be dead," Naruto told him with a grimace. Asuna was apparently the only one that had seen what he did, which surprised him a great deal. She had been hit the same time that he was, after all.

Without saying a word, he bought a fairly simple katana from the NPC. It was a standard Steel Katana, though the NPC offered the ability to customize the hilt, so its hilt was wrapped in orange and black cloth as a result.

"Do you guys need anything?" he asked, seeing that his party was just looking around.

"Lisbeth can repair metal equipment, and I don't need to replace any of my gear yet, so I'll just have her repair what I have," she said, earning a smile from their blacksmith friend.

Apparently, Agil and Lisbeth were of the same opinion, so only Naruto bought a new weapon.

"So what's the plan?" Asuna asked as they walked through the town. "You did say that we were going to do something different this time around."

"I was actually thinking that we should focus more on grinding than trying to clear this floor," Naruto admitted. "That last fight was a little too close, so even if it means clearing slows down a little, I want to be prepared."

"It's a good idea," Agil agreed. "There will be plenty of other clearers out there anyways. I'd be surprised if they even knew the second floor had been cleared yet, but they'll come up here eventually. If we leave the mapping of the labyrinth to them and wait until a clearing meeting is called, we can get our levels higher and still help with clearing."

"Yeah, that's what I meant," Naruto said, nodding his head. "Plus, there's the quest we should all take on this floor. If you want to form a guild, you had to complete it. I'm not planning on forming a guild, but if we do it as a party, then any of us can form one later on. Might be useful."

"We might want to stop for the day though," Agil said, though he appeared to agree with Naruto. "I imagine that you three are tired from fighting your way through the labyrinth and then fighting in the boss room."

Naruto reluctantly nodded in agreement. "I guess we should go and rent some rooms before more players get here. I think I'll get a little training done outside of town after that. I'm not too tired yet."

Asuna and Lisbeth looked at Naruto in surprise, both feeling pretty exhausted. Even Agil looked tired. But Naruto did not look tired in the least. They could tell that he was not simply trying to make himself look good.

The four ended up finding an inn that had plenty or rooms for rent. In the end, Naruto and Agil had their own rooms, while Asuna and Lisbeth opted to share a room.

After that was done, the party was temporarily disbanded so that Naruto could go and train by himself.

* * *

Not far from town, Naruto was standing in a field with several wolves surrounding him. His katana was sheathed, despite the potential danger of having so many monsters around him. The highest level wolves that he had encountered so far were level ten, so having six assault him at one time was not a good idea. Despite that, Naruto encouraged them to attack him.

Light Metal Equipment and Battle Healing could only be leveled up by being hit, so letting them attack him was necessary at that moment. He made sure to keep an eye on the durability of his armor during his training, having no desire to see it get destroyed. It seemed to hold up pretty well though, thankfully.

Seeing that his health had finally dropped to the red, Naruto began to kill the wolves using Martial Arts. It was a simple matter to take all six wolves out within the space of a few seconds. Being nine levels higher than the strongest one made that possible.

As soon as they were all dead, Naruto watched his health slowly begin to rise. It definitely was not a fast process, but that was why he was training his Battle Healing.

His health was only at forty percent when the wolves responded, but it seemed that he was not quick enough to take them out.

Right before he could move to do it, someone else killed them. There were two people. One wielded a dagger, while the other wielded a staff.

"I was trying to train," Naruto grumbled, seeing two familiar faces.

Standing before him was Akimichi Choji and Nara Shikamaru.

"Your health was low, so I thought you needed help," Choji admitted with a sheepish expression.

"Don't be so troublesome, Naruto," Shikamaru said, yawning. "All we saw was a trainer surrounded by a bunch of wolves. Seeing your health didn't help."

"I'm training Battle Healing and Light Metal Equipment, so my health is going to get low," Naruto said before shaking his head. "It doesn't matter though. What have you guys been doing? I figured you were somewhere in the game, but I figured you'd be lazing around on the first floor."

"If it was up to me, I would, but Choji's trying to level up his cooking," Shikamaru said, not bothered in the least by Naruto's assumption.

Naruto knew that it was not easy to level up cooking on the first floor. It seemed to get easier with every new floor because of the addition of new animals and ingredients.

"What about you, Naruto? What have you been doing?" Choji asked.

"Actually, I was part of the raid that cleared the first floor, and my party cleared the second floor on our own," Naruto told them, proud of the achievements.

"I should've figured you'd be a clearer," Shikamaru remarked, while Choji just looked surprised. "When the Teleport Gate to the Third Floor was open, quite a few of the clearers in Urbus were surprised. Apparently, they had no idea that anyone had even started mapping yet."

"We didn't exactly tell anyone what we were doing," Naruto admitted. "It was a close one though. Just fighting the minions, two members of my party were down to half health. The two of us that were fighting the boss were a lot worse. My health was down to twenty-five percent, and my partner's was down to twenty percent."

"Try to be careful," Shikamaru said, with a surprising level of concern in his eyes. "You may be troublesome, but you're my friend too. I'd rather not see any of my friends get marked off on the Monument of Life."

Naruto looked at Shikamaru at the mention of the Monument of Life.

"I only saw a few names that I recognized," Shikamaru said, recognizing the question in Naruto's eyes. "None of them were marked out."

Naruto let out a sigh of relief. He did not even bother asking who the names were. Personally, he would prefer not to know until they ran into each other.

"Now that we've run into each other…" Naruto said before trailing off and opening his menu. His two classmates received an invitation to accept him as a friend. "You'll be able to send me a message at any time."

They accepted it immediately, both seeing the benefits.

"We'll have to catch up later," Choji said, glancing at Shikamaru. "Good luck with your training. We want to go ahead and get to the next town before more people reach the third floor though."

"Have fun, and do a little cloud watching for me," Naruto said, earning a brief smile from Shikamaru. He could already see that the death game was changing Shikamaru. Normally, he would have just made a deadpan comment and walked away.

As the pair walked away, Naruto saw the wolves began to respawn. His health had recovered to six percent, so he let them just start attacking him again.

He did not return to town until night time. His armor was unequipped, having almost damaged it to the point of destruction, but it was still repairable.

* * *

"I was wondering where you were," Asuna said with concern in her eyes when Naruto walked into his room at the inn. He was surprised to see her waiting in his room, but he knew better than to ask. When dealing with upset girls, he knew better than to ask pointless questions.

"Sorry, I just got caught up in training," he apologized. "I didn't mean to worry you."

"I wasn't worried," Asuna denied, though he did not believe that for one second. "You just didn't say that you were going to train for that long. Lisbeth and Agil were worried. I better tell them you're back."

Without letting him say another word, she moved past him and left the room.

"What just happened?" he asked under his breath. Even after having a girlfriend before, girls were still something that he did not understand.

Shaking his head, he headed moved over to the bed and sat down. He was almost at full health, but health did not factor in exhaustion. He opened the menu using his right hand and went to his skills. His Katana and Martial Arts skills were both around level three hundred, but those were not the skills he was really looking at. His Battle Healing was around level two hundred, while his Light Metal Equipment was around level one hundred. In addition to those, he had an empty skill slot, having reached level twenty right before he returned to town.

Selecting the empty skill slot, he began to look through the list of skills that he could choose. He easily found the skill that he wanted. It was Sprint. It was both an active and passive skill, increasing his overall speed and allowing him to move with bursts of high speed.

He already knew a bunch of skills that he wanted. The only problem was that he would be limited to thirteen skills, having started out with three and gaining one every ten levels.

He was broken from his thoughts when Lisbeth walked into the room.

"Naruto, do you need your armor repaired?" Lisbeth asked. "Asuna said that it was probably badly damaged."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate your help," Naruto told her, taking his armor out so that she could take a look at it.

The process of repairing armor was oversimplified, as with many of the mundane skills in the game, but Lisbeth was able to fully repair the armor within a couple minutes.

"Is Asuna okay?" Naruto asked after he put the armor back in his inventory.

"She is," Lisbeth told him, looking as though he had told her something funny. "She was just worried about you. You had a big impact on her when you two first met, so it's only natural that she would worry about you when you were gone for over six hours by yourself."

Only later would he realize that she did not tell him the whole truth of why Asuna had been upset.

* * *

It was early in the morning when Naruto's party reformed and headed off to take the quest that would give them the ability to form a guild if any of them ever desired to do so.

Before long, it would be the single most taken quest, so they left earlier than they normally would have. According to Argo, less than a hundred players had ventured to the third floor so far, and most of them had gone straight to the labyrinth and began mapping it out.

"So what exactly is the quest?" Agil asked as they walked deep into the Misty Forest. The quest log only said that they were supposed to investigate a disturbance in the forest that had been killing animals. "Did you complete it in the Beta?"

Asuna and Lisbeth looked over to him in curiosity, in spite of the former's distanced attitude towards him since the previous night.

"Yeah, we did. I was teamed up with Kirito and Argo. Argo was planning to be an information broker even back then," Naruto told them. Growing deep in thought, he began to tell them what he remembered. The encounter with the Dire Wolf field boss had been difficult at best. It was designed to be impossible to solo. He had actually tried to do it in the Beta. Wolf minions spawned continuously when he attempted to solo it, yet not a single one spawned when he did it in a party.

"If we run into the Dire Wolf, we need to use the _Switch Strategy_. I'll team up with Asuna, while you can team up with Lisbeth. They may have changed the field boss or added minions though, so we'll just have to be prepared for anything," he said, his hand drifting to the katana at his hip.

"So we'll need to improvise if they changed it since the Beta?" Lisbeth asked.

"We'll have to pay close attention," Asuna said, nodding her head in response to her friend's question. "We can't always rely on what we're told about the Beta. The leader of the raid group on the first floor died because he expected everything to be the same."

Agil nodded grimly, remembering Diabel's death.

"We're here," Naruto suddenly said, recognizing the landmarks. Just as he unsheathed his sword, a massive white wolf came sliding into the clearing. The monster's fangs were dripping in saliva and a crazed look could be seen in its eyes.

"The Dire Wolf has three health bars," Naruto noted. It had two in the Beta.

"Let's move," Agil said, his deep voice rumbling.

The pair began to run side by side with Asuna and Lisbeth following after them.

The wolf lashed out with its razor sharp teeth, attempting to eat one of them, but Agil brought his axe up in a powerful arc, slicing into the bottom of its head and pushing its head up.

Naruto ducked under the wolf and brought his sword to the Dire Wolf's throat. "Suiryoku."

He quickly withdrew the sword and spun out of the wall, calling out, "Switch."

Asuna followed up on his attack with Linear, driving her Rapier into the Dire Wolf's chest.

As Asuna's blade made contact with it, Agil pulled his axe free and leapt out of the way, giving the command to switch.

Just as Asuna pulled her blade free, Lisbeth slammed her hammer into the Dire Wolf's nose.

Their attacks took out half of its first health bar. While it was unlikely that the field boss was even as strong as the floor boss of the previous floor, it was concerning that the Dire Wolf had so little health.

"Switch," Asuna and Lisbeth called out.

Whereas Agil went to assault the Dire Wolf from the front again, Naruto ran around to flank it. He used Nadegiri to leave a deep gash down the monster's right side. Immediately afterwards, he jumped out of the way and called out, "Switch."

"Linear," Asuna said, bringing her rapier into the Dire Wolf's side with a thrust.

Agil brought his axe down on the Dire Wolf's nose as Asuna's rapier was sheathed within its side. He drove its head into the ground. Instead of immediately pulling his axe out, he began to push it down with his considerable strength and spoke to Lisbeth.

"Give me a boost with your hammer."

She ran around him and swung the one-handed war hammer at the blade of the axe that was not currently in use. It pained her to do that, being a blacksmith, but the force of the hit drove the axe blade deeper.

"Asuna, be careful. You're on your own for a little bit," Naruto said as he took off running to the front of the wolf.

He arrived just in time to bring his blade in an arc and kill a mob-type wolf before it attacked Lisbeth from behind. He had seen a dozen of them spawn the instant the Dire Wolf's health dropped to its second bar.

"I'll handle this guys, you three deal with this boss until I'm done. Be careful."

Thankfully, Asuna did not need Naruto's help any further. Agil generated enough hate that the Dire Wolf had no intention of turning to face her. She chained Linear and slashing attacks in rapid succession, slowly chipping away at the second health bar.

As she attacked the Dire Wolf, Agil and Lisbeth switched off and on, dealing heavy hits in a frontal assault. They both sustained injuries from its claws, but it was not as bad as it could have been.

"Tsujikaze," Naruto said, swinging his katana in a wide, sweeping arc. The Iai-type Sword Skill injured all of the wolves, but it did not kill a single one of them. That was fine with him though. Using his speed, he dashed from wolf to wolf, finishing them all off with basic slashes of his katana.

As soon as they were all dead, Naruto turned to go and help his party. Agil and Lisbeth's health were down to eighty percent, while Asuna was still unharmed.

Right before he could move, he felt something slam into his back. It was followed by sharp pain in his right shoulder as he felt razor sharp teeth pierce his flesh. It was far less painful than a real injury, but there was still some measure of pain.

Naruto flipped his katana upside down and thrust it backwards, piercing a wolf in the stomach. With a twist of his sword, he killed it. Even so, it had dropped his health by fifteen percent.

Spinning around, Naruto saw that all of the wolves had respawned already.

"Try to take out the boss as quickly as you can. It looks like these guys will just keep respawning as long as the boss is still on this bar of health. Hopefully, they'll stop once the Dire Wolf is down to one bar," Naruto said before he began to deal with the wolves. Unlike before, he solely used Hiogi to take out the wolves. The combination of upwards cut, downwards slash, and thrust was enough to take them out quickly.

"One bar to go," Agil called out suddenly.

Naruto waited a few seconds. Once he was sure that the wolves were not going to respawn, he returned to the fight against the field boss. From the looks of it, the entire party had been injured. Agil's health was hovering at sixty percent, while Lisbeth's was at seventy percent. Asuna's was only down to ninety percent.

"Lisbeth, join Asuna. I'll help Agil out," Naruto said as he moved towards the pair. From the looks of it, the only two with significant hate built up were him and Agil. Killing the two dozen wolves had generated a large amount of hate for him, while Agil's was so high because his fighting style was more akin to that of a tank than to the style of any of the others.

Lisbeth did not say anything, instead moving to assist Asuna in her assault on the Dire Wolf's side.

Instead of switching back and forth, Naruto and Agil began a relentless assault on the Dire Wolf at the same time. Agil was slow but delivered crushing blows with his axe, while Naruto chained slashes and thrusts together, chipping away at the health of the field boss.

Naruto was careful to dodge the Dire Wolf's claws and teeth during the fight. He actually had to pull Agil out of the way of a few attacks in the process. Risking having their health drop too much more was not something that Naruto wanted to experience.

Once their relentless assault dropped the Dire Wolf's health down to ten percent, Naruto chained Ukifune, Nadegiri, and Suiryoku. While very similar to Hiogi, chaining the three attacks made them far more powerful.

With the thrust of his blade, the Dire Wolf's health dropped to zero and a message popped up, stating that they had completed the mission and gained the ability to form a guild.

Following the message, the drops and experience were distributed. Once again, Naruto received the Last Attack Bonus.

Naruto ended up receiving _Weathered Vambraces_, _Dire Wolf Fang_ and a good bit of Col from the battle. The experience he received was enough to bring him up to level twenty-one, though that was likely because of all the wolves he had taken out, not to mention the Last Attack Bonus.

He equipped the Weathered Vambraces and saw that they were almost the exact same shade as his armor. They covered his forearms and were Light Metal Armor, so it looked like they would be a good match for him.

"Last Hit Bonus again?" Agil asked, seeing him equip the armor.

"Yeah, I guess I just get lucky when Kirito isn't around," Naruto said, shaking his head.

"Try to save some for us," Agil joked.

"If I get something that I can't use, you guys can have it," Naruto told him. Getting the one type of armor that he had invested a skill slot in from both of the Last Hit Bonuses that he scored had been a bit of sheer luck.

"It suits you," Asuna remarked as she looked at the armor.

That was all she said, but Naruto could tell that in that moment, she was no longer being distant from him. That was something that made him happy beyond belief, even though he had no idea why exactly that was.

* * *

Author's Note: And there's another chapter down. Still not one of my best, but I'm fairly happy with it.

With the next chapter, I think there will be a time-skip. Only about a month, but it's necessary that I do occasional timeskips.

Anyways, thanks for reading and reviewing.


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